Hi,
So each time you enter the arena, your AI will fight 10 games in parallel against opponents taken from the whole leaderboard (from first to last). Based on the results of these 10 games you will be positioned into the arena at a given position (based on your TrueSkill mean for the 10 matches minus 3 times the deviation which is very high at this point => you will enter the Arena at a lower place than what you probably deserve).
Then 100 matches will be played sequentially against opponents not far from your rank (taken from the range [rank-10, rank+5]). After each of the 100 matches, your TrueSkill mean and deviation is recomputed and a new rank is computed before the new match is launched: that’s how you bubble up in the leaderboard.
After the 10+100 matches are played, you will play additional matches only against opponents re-submitting into the arena. Your mean, deviation and rank will be recomputed accordingly after each match.
At this point, for the Platinum Rift challenge we do not have the time to move the 100 limit up. We know we should as it is a bit small, but we will really not be able to make it.
But we heard you loud and clear, so at the end of the challenge for the top 100 players only, 200 additional matches will be played per player. So do not hesitate to push before the end of the challenge (it means at the very least 300 matches per player + all the matches you will be play against opponents). Read the full news in the updated Platinum Rift statement.
Last thing: when fighting with someone within the top 15, each match is replayed 5 times (with a new seed) before being fed to TrueSkill, it allows us to make sure (or be more certain) that if you beat someone in the top 15 or if someone from the top 15 beats you then it was not by chance. It means that players in the top 15 are likely to do more than > 500 matches per submissons. Goal being to have a more stable leaderboard at the top.
Keep Coding!